Your home for everything artistic

Posts tagged ‘editing’

As Promised, here is the info on my new e-book and where you can find it.

The details:

The advancing technology we have available to us can be an incredible and amazing thing. However, it can also be costly and difficult to utilize in some cases. This e-book is designed as a collection of 65 online and downloaded resources to help assist creative people in doing the things they love with ease and at either no cost or affordable prices.

For those artists, photographers, writers and videographer types, this book is for you. For the people who work with audio and animation, this is for you.

From the least experienced writing novice to the author with several books under his or her belt, everyone needs an editor. To some, this may seem obvious but to many the reaction may be quite different.

First off, what I’m talking about here is not an editor in terms of an intermediary between a publisher and a writer but more of a proof reader if you will.

Simply put, proof reading your own work will only get you so far.

In order to help to ensure your manuscript is in tip top shape, you should:

1. Have others review your work for mistakes

– From typos to incorrect grammar and phrasing, getting someone else to review your work can be crucial. Of course, the person doing so should have a good grasp on spelling and grammar.

2. Realize the weakness in our own perception

– Writers often miss their own mistakes by projecting their expectations onto the page while reading their work. We tend read things as we intended them to be rather than as they actually appear, leaving us vulnerable to missing our own errors.

Taking these basic precautions can work wonders for the quality of your final manuscript whether you are Joe Blow the aspiring novelist or have produced worldwide best sellers.

Whether you shoot digital photography for fun, for a profession or for something in between, if you are even remotely serious about the art, it stands to reason that you might do a lot of editing. In fact, even the best of the best among the photographers I have met seem to feel that if you can have 5-10% of you images come out without any need for editing, you’ve done an excellent job.

With all that being said, there are some organizational and technical procedures that can help you streamline the whole editing process and help to keep you from feeling the need to rip your hair out from frustration.

In the event that it may help you, here’s how I keep my process flowing.

1. Initial review of photos

– Review your shots one by one to determine whether or not they are worth editing or should just be send to your recycle bin.

2. Create several folders

– Create a folder for images to be edited and one for images to disregard.

3. Open duplicate files

– Open your file and a duplicate copy. Edit the duplicate copy while leaving the other alone. This way, you can measure the difference in your work.

4. More editing and ad more sub-folders

– Once you have successfully edited your first photo, create a sub-folder to store it and all other edited shots. Within that sub-folder, you can create an additional sub-folder for shots converted to black and white or featuring other effects such as spot color if you so choose.

5. Rename edited copies and move your originals

– Once you have edited a photo from your “To be edited” folder, save it with a different file name. Then, you can put the original (see step 3) in a sub-folder labeled something like “Done” or “Finished” so that you know you have already edited that shot and do no run the risk of accidentally editing it several times.

6. Delete

– Once you’ve finished editing everything, delete your folder of shots to be disregarded and you’ll be left with a well organized group of folders and sub-folders for all of the final products.

In the end, it should be something like this:

Two primary folders –

“Trash” and “To be edited”

Sub-folders within “To be edited” –

“Done” – Where you can store the original copes of shots you have finished editing.

“Edited” – Where you can keep your edited, final copies.

Sub-folders within “Edited” –

“Black and White” or “Spot Color” or any other effect you opt to work with that is not done in standard color.

This may sound a bit complex bit in process it’s actually really easy and will help you keep your shots better organized when you need to access, print or upload for any reason.